Hi crawlers! Here’s the latest and greatest from trunk:

  • God wrath has been changed to trigger only as experience is gained; it occurs more frequently, but tends to occur only during / after significant battles.
  • Several deities – Okawaru, Trog, Vehumet, Makhleb, Yredelemnul, and Kikubaaqudgha – have had their wrath tinkered with, mainly to scale better with the player’s XL.
  • The shadow mimic behaviour of Dithmenos (formerly Dithmengos) followers has changed – spells aren’t directly mimicked (except for enchantments), instead yielding a shadow shard or shadow bolt depending on the original spell, and damage output from physical attacks has been reworked.
  • All skills usable by divine abilities are available to train immediately on worshipping that god, rather than needing to wait for the abilities to become available. For most gods this is Invocations where applicable; for Nemelex this is Evocations; for Kikubaaqudgha this is Necromancy. TSO followers can also train shields at any time (cf. Divine Shield).
  • New unrand artefacts: the +3,+5 arc blade {discharge, rElec}, a cutlass which causes a static discharge effect on one third of melee attacks; and the +3,+6 demon whip “Spellbinder” {antimagic, MR+}, which inflicts miscast effects on spellcasters related to the spells they can cast.
  • An experimental new Swamp level layout, appearing on 2/7 of all non-ending Swamp levels.
  • Summoned allies will attack enemies without needing to be being prompted to do so.
  • Another redesign of the Vaults:5 layout – the outer ring has returned, and all of the corners of the quadrants are now open to the ring.
  • Item destruction from sticky flame has been reduced.
  • Felids can now use wands.
  • The list of recommended combinations has been revised heavily; as part of the changes, species and background recommendations are now independent of each other – that is, a species may recommend a background where that background does not necessarily recommend that species, and vice-versa.
  • Large rocks are no longer inherently penetrating (this was itself a trunk experiment).
  • Dith’s Shadow Form now causes skill drain on taking damage, and is usable by all races (i.e. undead can use it).
  • Crystal golems have been replaced with crystal guardians – less HP, but the ability to fire a crystal bolt which bounces off of all features and deals either fire or cold damage on a per-bolt basis.
  • Lemures and jellyfish are no more.
  • Many other smaller changes.

Happy crawling!